


Distraction

by starlight_in_the_gloom



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: M/M, this exists now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:09:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23051467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_in_the_gloom/pseuds/starlight_in_the_gloom
Summary: While the Mechanisms perform at Gender Rebels, it is Brian’s job to keep Jonny distracted.
Relationships: Drumbot Brian/Jonny d'Ville
Comments: 17
Kudos: 242





	Distraction

There is an art to being shot in the head. Up through the chin, between the eyes, straight in the temple, they’re all uniquely satisfying experiences. Jonny, personally, is a fan of being shot through the back of the throat; the severing of the brain stem feels like— fire.

Tim has no sense of artistry. He likes to leave nothing but bone shards and detritus.

Jonny blinks, vision returned. His head has finished pulling itself together, and he is staring directly at the ceiling of the Aurora, underneath the white fluorescent lights.

His breathing is labored. There is a weight on his chest? He inhales, spine clicking, and yep. He cranes his head upward, and yep. That’s Brian. Sitting on his chest. Fiddling with a colorful puzzle cube.

“The fuck?” he says eloquently.

“Ah, you’re back,” Brian says, calm. “Pity.”

Jonny flips him off. Brian draws, and he’s always faster than Jonny expects, and he presses the barrel to his mouth and fires.

When Jonny is back, Brian is still sitting on his chest.

“Fuck off,” Jonny greets him this time. He doesn’t bother reaching for his gun. He can tell by the taste of the bullet that  _ his  _ gun was the one Brian used to kill him, and Brian will have it hidden somewhere on him. So he tries to get up, instead, but being made mostly of metal, Brian is heavy as  _ hell _ , and his struggles get him nowhere. And struggle he does. And yell, and curse, and generally be a nuisance.

Brian continues the turn the cube over in his hands, silently.

“Why’d Doc build you so heavy, huh?” He pants. “Store a whole goddamn anvil in your—” He punches out at Brian’s chest, and a strange popping noise— _ besides  _ his knuckles breaking—stops him. Brian’s shirt bulges oddly. The drumbot frowns, and reaches down his collar, pulling out two pieces of half-done toast.

“Now look what you’ve done,” he sounds disappointed. “They weren’t ready yet.”

“Why didn’t I know there was a toaster in your chest,” Jonny hopes his bewilderment sounds like anger. It probably would, to anyone who hadn’t known him for so long.

Brian shrugs. “Well, there isn’t  _ always. _ I just happen to be a kitchen set right now.” He unbuttons his shirt, and slides the bread in two open slots on his chest. He clicks something Jonny can’t quite see, and the toast begins cooking again.

So now there is a partially shirtless man on top of Jonny, and he happens to be an unsexy robot. All flat, bronze, boring metal. With  _ toast  _ in his  _ fucking  _ chest. Just Jonny’s luck.

Jonny flexes his hand, broken knuckles knitting back together. “I presume the others are doing something utterly insubordinate and rude?”

Brian makes a noncommittal hum. He finishes the puzzle cube; it looks more like an origami crane now, if an origami crane was made of hundreds of tiny glowing rainbow tiles.

If the crew left him behind and left  _ Brian  _ to detain him—then they weren’t planning to leave, they were doing something on planet without him—

“Are they having a fucking concert,” Jonny says as the realization hits him. He sees red and his pulse pounds. “Are they having a  _ fucking concert without—” _

__ __ “Now, Jonny,” Brian says, pulling a kettle out of- somewhere. He pours a cup of tea. “One sugar or two?”

“I can’t believe this, those  _ stupid bastards—” _

__ __ “If you’ll calm down, I was hoping we could speak rationally,” he continues, and sets the tea by his hand. Jonny slams his fist down on it, shattering the cup. Shards of china dig into his skin and the hot tea scalds his hand. He slams his fist down on the shattered remnants of his cup again.

“Fuck you and your stupid kitchen appliance body,” Jonny seethes. Brian opens a hatch by his stomach and removes a tray of cookies. “I’m going to leave you in a sun and never come back for you, see how much you like baking then you bloody insubordinate hunk of shitty fucking metal—”

“I was  _ hoping  _ we could speak _ rationally _ ,” Brian repeats, pointedly. He offers Jonny a cookie. It actually smells rather good, but Jonny is far too furious to appreciate that. He can barely think past the overload of emotion like static in his ears. He can barely think. He can barely—

He thrashes, and strikes out at Brian again, and this time, there’s a cracking sound. Well, there are quite a few cracking sounds. His knuckles, his elbow, his shoulder sliding out of place, but most importantly, some part of Brian knocks out of place, too.

The drumbot is shoved back, just by an inch or two, but it’s enough for Jonny to get some amount of leverage. He is going to fucking kill his crew, and the rest of this godforsaken planet for good measure—

Brian swings on leg over him and slams his forearm across his chest, forcing him back down to the ground. His sternum creaks. Brian wraps his other hand around Jonny’s throat.

He struggles, but with Brian’s full weight on him and with no oxygen, Jonny’s losing ground, fast.

“We didn’t have to do it like this,” Brian says, disapprovingly. His words reach Jonny as if he’s underwater. Black spots dance around his peripherals and his heart hammers. “Get some rest, Jonny.”

After a moment, it all stops.

  
  


For the third time that evening, Brian is left atop Jonny’s corpse. It will likely not be the last.

  
  


Consciousness returns to him in increments. See, there’s a unique sensation to being strangled, too, and that’s the weird drowsiness that always hits. It takes him a minute to gather himself.

Brian is still straddling him, but he has placed a checkerboard on Jonny’s chest. Without a word, Jonny smacks it off. The board hits the wall nicely, but the magnetic pieces stay mostly where they are. Jonny scowls.

Brian sighs. “That was simply unnecessary.”

Jonny flips him off. Brian reaches over, the joint of his elbow clicking out and doing something odd, and he reaches the six feet to the wall and plucks the board off the floor. He sets the board back down on Jonny’s chest. Insufferable.

Jonny knocks it off again.

He tires of the game rather quickly, and with his range of motion inhibited as it is, he has to lay there and let Brian set the game up. There are a few pieces missing, Jonny notes with satisfaction. “You’ll be playing without three checkers,” Brian informs him. “Congratulations.”

“I’m not playing checkers with you,” Jonny says flatly. “So fucking sorry to disappoint.” Jonny picks up one of the pieces and throws at Brian. It sticks to the side of his face. Brian rolls his eyes and pulls it off.

“You know, I  _ am  _ trying to be friendly about this,” Brian says, frustration seeping into his voice.

“What setting are you even on?!” Jon asks, throwing his hands in the air. “You make cookies, you strangle me—”

“I’m on ends justify means,” Brian interrupts. “And being willing to do violence against you doesn’t mean that’s my first option. I thought it would be more efficient to calm you rather than continuously kill you until they return.”

“You mean until they finish their concert,” Jonny bites out. There’s a petulant edge to his voice that he hates, and it just makes him angrier. “Without us.”

“It’s one concert,” Brian says, brow knitting. “We have many others. It will only be forgotten in the long run.”

“Bullshit,” Jonny snarled. “You could say that about any of our fucking concerts! Of course they’re important!”

Brian pauses. He moves a piece on the board. “Alright, imagine it like this: you have one hundred games of chess, and you lose one. Does that discount the ninety-nine other games of chess you won?”

He cocks an eyebrow expectantly, gesturing toward Jonny’s side of the board. Jonny throws another checker at him. It sticks just below his collarbone. His metal collarbone. What’s the point of that?

Brian just sighs and ignores it. He moves one of Jonny’s pieces for him.

“Imagine it like this,” Jonny mocks. “You’re playing chess and your opponent shoots you in the hands, knocks all your pieces off the board, and declares themselves winner. Or they just sit on you and strangle you when you try to get up. Is that fair?”

“That is not what I intended through the chess metaphor,” Brian says, long-suffering. “Consider it more like this, then: every time you perform at a concert, the percentage of concerts missing you is lowered. And as you’re immortal, that percentage will only ever go down.”

“What, are you supposed to be our archivist now?” Jonny says. “Well, you’re doing a shit job of it, because we’re ALL immortal, dumbass, and if they think this shit is okay, they’re gonna keep doing it!”

“Is it so bad?” Brian says. Jonny grabs a handful of checkers and throws them at him. Brian blinks at him, metal body speckled with magnets. His left arm twitches. He  _ glowers. _ Jonny giggles, before stifling it with his fist. He absentmindedly notes that all the porcelain had been carefully removed from his skin to allow it to heal.

For a brief moment, Brian’s face softens, but only for a moment. He draws his gun— _ Jonny’s  _ gun, the gun that he  _ stole _ —and shoots him, again through the back of the throat.

  
  


Brian looks down at Jonny’s corpse. He was right to assume the last time wouldn’t be the last. He sighs once more and puts the gun away.

  
  


“You know,” Jonny groans upon returning. “I do recall someone saying something about violence not being the first option, or the most efficient,”

“You were being annoying.” Brian says bluntly. The checkerboard is gone and Brian is fiddling with a screwdriver and a section of his body around the shoulder, doing something with the wires.

“Did your toaster break?” Jonny sneers.

“No, part of the nerves in my arm did,” Brian replies sharply. “The magnets screwed up the cybernetics.”

As if to punctuate this, his left arm twitches violently. Brian curses as his shoulder is jolted, and a small spark flies from the tangle of wires.

Jonny laughs. Brian gives him a  _ look _ . Jonny grins at him, unrepentant.

He continues to dig around in his shoulder. He’s still straddling Jonny over the waist, and if it were anyone else, Jonny might be able to wiggle his way out, but all that metal is just so damn  _ heavy _ , and-

Brian’s arm shudders, and Brian makes a small, pained sound in the back of his throat as the screwdriver digs into somewhere it wasn’t supposed to. The drumbot closes his eyes. Jonny thinks he might be embarrassed.

“Do you want some help?” Jonny offers. Brian levels him with a tired, frustrated glare he has been on the receiving end of  _ many _ times, but that somehow stings more than he remembers.

“Yes, I’m just going to let you poke around inside my mechanism, because you definitely want to help and not kill me so you can escape and kill everyone else,” Brian says, the sarcasm apparent. “Absolutely.”

“I mean that genuinely, fuckhead!” Jonny exclaims. “But fine! Do whatever the hell you want, I’m sure you have it handled.”

Brian does not respond, and merely returns to his work. Jonny flips him off. Brian’s arm curls suddenly upward, and he drops the screwdriver in surprise. He grips his wrist with his right hand and tries to force it back down. It will not go. Brian closes his eyes and sighs.

“You gonna allow my assistance now?” Jonny drawls. Brian’s glare is wearier this time, but he shimmies back and gives Jonny enough room to sit up. With Brian’s weight still in his lap, he isn’t able to stand, but Jonny supposes he could try and grab the gun. Wherever it is. He picks up the screwdriver instead.

Jonny pauses. “I, uh, I’ve helped Nastya with the Aurora before, but—”

Brian plucks the tool from his fingers, and taps a bundle of wires that cross just diagonal to the gap in his shoulder. “Hold that aside for a moment and try to keep my arm from moving?”

Jonny pulls the wires down. He tries to be gentle, but he doesn’t know if he succeeds. 

It’s a difficult task, to keep Brian’s arm from twitching, because although he doesn’t have super strength by any means, his arm doesn’t strain the way an organic muscle would. That’s how Brian describes it, anyway. 

They end up with his arm wrapped around Jonny’s waist, Jonny’s arm aligned with it and gripping his forearm. It’s the most stable they can get; at one particularly violent twitch, Brian accidentally cracks one of his ribs, but it heals.

Time becomes a difficult thing to measure when you’re immortal, but Jonny doesn’t think it takes longer than fifteen minutes to repair his shoulder. Brian sets his tools down, and flexes his fingers—they move under his command once again—but then pauses. Jonny closes his eyes; Brian may be cold and heavy, but there’s something comforting about their closeness.

There is a small moment where they exist in the quiet.

Then Jonny flips Brian’s switch and goes for the gun.

Not on his belt—he’s not wearing a holster—and it’s not in his coat, then—

Brian pins him down, forearm over his chest, one of Jonny’s wrists held to the ground by Brian’s other hand. The arm  _ Jonny  _ helped him fix. Ingrate.

“You lied,” Brian says, but he doesn’t sound surprised, just disappointed. Jonny fidgets uncomfortably.

“You’re not supposed to be violent when you’re in MJE,” Jonny accuses. He shoves at Brian’s right shoulder with his free hand, but it’s half-hearted at best.

“I’m not being violent, I am defending myself,” Brian huffs. “I don’t like it when you flip my switch. It’s—”

“Oh, no, I feel so bad,” Jonny mocks. “Oh, you have morals again! Oh no! Stars know you’ll just make that our problem, anyway—”

“It’s the principle of the matter!” Brian insists. “I appreciate having decent morals again, but, it’s a deeply unpleasant sensation. Switching, that is. Like I have lost control over my own thoughts. I would appreciate it if you didn’t. This is the fifth time I’ve told you.”

“I don’t appreciate being trapped in this fucking ship like I’m some child,” Jonny snarls. Brian sighs.

“Fair enough, I suppose,” he says wearily, and simply looks at Jonny. In the lull of banter, Jonny realizes how— _ close  _ they are. They’d been close this whole damn ordeal, but-

“You know,” Brian begins, tentatively, “We could- ah,  _ leave _ , for a moment. Not for long, just long enough to give them a bit of a startle, but, really, I was just meant to keep you distracted. I’m fairly certain I outrank Tim anyway.”

“So this is Tim’s work,” Jonny says, eyes narrowing. “Of course. I shoulda known.”

Brian looks at him, exasperated. Jonny grins.

“And by  _ not for long _ , how much wiggle room do we have there? Year? Decade? Quarter century—”

“Oh, shut up,” Brian says. Jonny ignores the fondness in his voice, for the sake of his poor mechanical heart.

“And if the means are  _ leave them all behind _ , what ends is that justifying? A grand screw you? Because, that is absolutely—”

“The end is cheering you up,” Brian says, simple as that. As if it’s the most obvious thing in the universe. Jonny stops dead.

“…That’s awful philanthropic of a drumbot currently pinning me to the floor,” he says weakly.

Brian rolls his eyes and sits up, releasing Jonny’s hand. “Don’t kill me, please,” as if he is asking for Jonny not to flat-tire his sneakers. For the Mechanisms, he supposes it is an apt level of concern.

In a moment of what Jonny likes to call insanity, he surges upward and kisses Brian, briefly, probably badly but the point gets across.

Brian catches him, hands on his jawline, before he can fully retreat, and kisses him too. Jonny is momentarily surprised at how gentle he is, considering he is made of brass and copper and the like, but he supposes that if anyone were to pull it off, it would be Brian.

Brian when he’s boring, anyway. Though this isn’t very boring—he digresses that train of thought, and focuses instead on Brian’s lips, his own lips, and the interesting and rather nice scenario they have found themselves in.

They are interrupted by the distant ricochet of gunfire. Brian pulls back with a curse.

“They’re on their way back, then,” he says, brow drawn. “If we want to leave—”

“Yeah, those bastards can stay here and rot,” Jonny snarls, and they try to stand, and it is a flurry of limbs and they are still tangled and as much as Jonny wants to abandon these fuckers, he also doesn’t really want to move that far from Brian— and he’s laughing as much as he is pissed off.

It’s dicey, but they make it. They leave the crew far behind in wherever they went; Brian does the navigating, not him.

He hopes they’re all having a terrible time wherever they are. He and Brian are too busy enjoying an extended  _ distraction _ .

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Gender Rebels happened before HNOC, far as I can tell,,,, that’s all


End file.
